Not Hiring Phil Jackson

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I am not going to say that hiring Mike D'Antoni was a bad call, but Phil Jackson should have gotten full priority. According to Phil (via ESPN, h/t CBSSports), he was made to believe that the coaching position was his to lose.

Phil has a strong relationship with three of the Laker starters, and the triangle could definitely work with the current group of Lakers on the floor.

Oh yeah, and he won 11 titles as an NBA head coach. Picking D'Antoni made sense considering that Steve Nash is running the offense, and Gasol's struggles.

With that said, there is no way D'Antoni is a better option for the new-look Lakers than Phil Jackson. I feel like there is a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that we just don't know about with this.

Depth/Bench Play

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Before the season, it was clear the Lakers didn't have a great second unit, the hope was that they wouldn't really need it. Unfortunately, the Lakers have had to go to their bench quite a few times this year.

On another sad note, they have had to rely on Jodie Meeks, Darius Morris and a greatly underperforming Antawn Jamison to provide the support.

I will also acknowledge the great play of Jordan Hill in the second unit, but that's the only bright spot. Everyone else has had exactly zero positive impact on either end of the floor.

Antawn Jamison is the biggest disappointment, and his stats sit far below his career averages. While that could be blamed on a decreased role, it would not be right in this case.

Jamison has just played badly, no way around it. The rest of the bench is right behind him and playing terrible basketball.

The Record

This summer, ESPN projected the Lakers would win 59 games while Yahoo.com predicted 64 wins. Now that the Lakers sit at 15-16, both of those predictions look pretty much impossible.

While the Lakers were bound to go through some growing pains, no one thought that they would be this bad. It's understandable that they are not in the top three in the West, but to not be in the top eight?

At this point, every loss is hurting L.A. more and more. The Lakers can't afford another slump, and them winning the title seems like an impossible feat.

The excuses are starting to run out. Looking past the poor play, the injuries and the front-office errors, all we have are the wins and losses.

If the season ended today, the Lakers would not be in the playoffs. We are almost at the halfway point here, so this isn't a little "out-of-the-gate stumble."

This might be a Superteam on paper, but they are nothing but an average group on the floor.

Thank you for reading and please leave your thoughts in the comments below!